The goal of this blog is to help you hold your own in political discussions--especially when the other guy's fighting dirty. Some dirty tricks are obvious, others are subtle. But even when they're blatant it can be hard to know what to say. I'll help. I lean Democrat myself, but I'm as against Democrats using underhanded tactics as I am against Republicans doing so. Fair is fair, and this blog aims to help anyone who shares this belief.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

How to prevent all that voter fraud that isn't taking place

There's an easy way to deal with the Republicans' claim that they need harsh voter ID laws to prevent the widespread voter fraud they've spent a decade looking for with no results: adopt India's biometric ID database program. If India has the technology, the infrastructure, and the money to do it, surely the USA does.

Using people's unique retinal pattern trumps photo IDs by a long shot. And there's no ID card needed--just show up with your eyes in their sockets. You can use photo IDs for the few that lack eyes.

You can automatically register everyone to vote who's elegible to vote--just enter them as "undeclared" unless they take a further step voluntarily and join a political party.

No muss, no fuss. The Republicans get the positive voter identification they say is required "for the integrity of the system" though, wink wink, we all know what they really want.

And the Democrats have all their complaints answered about difficulty of registering and money/time required to get a photo ID. India is doing it sending workers out into the communities to ID everyone.

As a plus, it makes it really, really hard for illegals to cheat the system and use fake IDs to work. Another plus for Republicans.

So why isn't the Republican party demanding this? It would cost far less than the bureaucracies they're building state by state.

Oh yeah. Adopting a universal biometric ID database would defeat their real goal: to win elections by hook or by crook.

That's why.

EDIT ADD: I just read an article about this in The Economist. You can see it here. You need to register but it's free.

The comment thread for this article had lots of comments by American Republicans justifying the GOP's voter suppression program and villifying the Democrats, accusing them of whining about the GOP preventing their massive conspiracy to commit vote fraud.

Here's what I couldn't figure out: do they really believe their malarkey? Are they so far gone into their alternate-universe haze that they believe, absent any actual evidence, that the Democrats are the fraudsters and not their own party carrying on the century-long fine old Southern White tradition of preventing blacks from voting? Or do they want to win so badly that they believe their party's immoral behavior is justified by the end: getting the Negro out of office.

That's it, isn't it? The bone in their throat. The bone that the Southern Republicans are fully aware of, but that other Republicans probably only "feel" in an unverbalized sort of way--just a general revulsion at Barack Hussein Obama's Otherness--his name, his skin color, his international upbringing, his non-Fundamentalist values...even his slightly Black speech patterns (probably acquired as an adult, given his having grown up outside any Black community). And of course his old pastor, Rev. Wright, whose grievances at the White America of his youth are completely dismissed as having any validity--as if America never wronged Blacks. As if he should have instantly forgotten it all the instant the Supreme Court banned school segregation (which persisted unchanged for over a decade after the first ruling, mind you).

Today's racism takes the form of denial of racism and vilification of anyone who dares mention it. I know, liberals have played the race card about everything under the sun--most egregiously about illegal immigration. Truth is, both sides play the race card constantly, each in their own vile way. Doesn't mean it ain't there.